NRM Video Contest Grand Prize Winner Kaylee Snell
Nov 21, 2023
ARLINGTON, VA – Every year, the judges for the National Rice Month Scholarship Video Contest sift through a huge number of video submissions from some of the most talented, driven, and creative high school seniors in the six rice-growing states. It’s a tough competition, and often a difficult decision to choose the video entry that tells the most compelling, informative, and entertaining story about U.S. rice. This year, the grand prize winner stood out with an ensemble cast of siblings, a delightful sense of humor, and a unique concept: what if rice was a famous celebrity?
In her video, “Rice: A Worldwide Celebrity,” Kaylee Snell, a senior at Bentonville High School in northwest Arkansas, concocts an entire persona for U.S. rice, using a pair of sunglasses, a great script, and some innovative editing skills. The video traces the long and storied history of rice, from its humble beginnings of domestication in Asia thousands of years ago, through its early cultivation in the Carolinas in the 1700s, to the modern U.S. rice industry in her home state.
“I’ve always loved film, video, and making little skits; me and my siblings all love to do that,” said Kaylee. “I get a lot of inspiration from YouTube videos, and I’d say that’s where I got the humor from. I wanted to create an educational video that was also entertaining and fun to watch, not just reading facts off a sheet of paper. It’s kind of a play on the celebrity idea, because everybody knows rice, it’s already famous worldwide. And I just thought adding the sunglasses would be funny!”
Although Kaylee is from Arkansas, the number one rice-producing state, she was unaware of that important designation. “A big thing I wanted to show in my video is that a lot of people know rice, but they don’t really know where it comes from or all the people who dedicate themselves to that field, and all the work that goes into it. I was very drawn to that idea.”
Kaylee’s video, along with the other award-winning entries, will be screened at the 2023 USA Rice Outlook Conference Awards Luncheon in Indian Wells next month, and available after that on the USA Rice YouTube page.